Choose Your Own Righteous Anger: the Obama Budget Adventure Game

Why are you angry about President Obama’s newly revealed budget? There are many enraging options to choose from—but finding the one that fits can be a challenge. Use VF.com’s handy guide for identifying the source of your personal fiscal fury.

Are you. . . a liberal?

Option one:The working poor should not have to freeze to death. “Obama’s proposing a $452 million cut to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the program that helps needy families heat and cool their homes. He also wants to cut $472 million, compared to his last budget, for EPA’s state revolving loan funds for wastewater and drinking water.” —Politico

Option two: Old people are America’s greatest—and possibly only—natural resource. “[F]or the first time, Obama formally proposes to slow the growth in Social Security benefits by applying a less-generous measure of inflation to programs throughout the federal government. The change would trim cost-of-living increases by roughly 0.3 percent a year, saving the government about $130 billion over the next decade.” —The Washington Post

Option three: Barack Obama is just the worst. “‘I don’t believe all those ideas are optimal, but I’m willing to accept them’ as part of a larger deal, Obama said in a speech delivered in the Rose Garden of the White House Wednesday morning.” —Politico

Are you. . . a conservative or libertarian?

Option four: The president has forgotten the nation’s most vulnerable people—its non-people. “Mr. Obama would reduce deficits by more than $600 billion further over a decade through additional tax increases on the wealthy and some corporations.” —The New York Times

Option five: Won’t someone thing of the liberty? Of the cigarettes? “Obama is calling for $750 million in discretionary spending, funded by a big increase in the federal tax on cigarettes.” —Politico

Option six: “While the president’s request falls far short of the austere, no-new-taxes, balanced-budget proposal adopted by House Republicans earlier this year, the White House argues that it represents serious debt reduction.” —The Washington Post

Are you. . . someone who recognizes that life is limited and we don’t all have endless time to pretend to take unserious things seriously?

Option seven: Let’s skip the part where we talk about this. “It has little chance of becoming law.” —CNN

Are you. . . someone understandably confused by math?

Option eight: Wasn’t the Introduction to Economics supposed to end after spring semester? “The 10-year budget plan would cut spending by about $1.2 trillion over that time to replace the indiscriminate across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, that took effect March 1 when Mr. Obama and Republican leaders failed to agree on alternative deficit reduction measures. His plan would have the effect of substituting reductions in so-called entitlement and mandatory benefit programs—whose growth is driving the future deficit projections, along with insufficient tax revenues—for the across-the-board reductions in the full range of domestic and military programs that have borne the brunt of deficit reductions to date, spawning cutbacks and furloughs in services as varied as air traffic control, Head Start and medical research.” —The New York Times